57

Marianna.

The job is real. The paycheck is coming. The apartment is... this, but it's mine in the way that matters, which is to say I'm paying for it with money I earned and nobody is doing me a favor by letting me exist here.

That should feel better than it does.

I poke at my rice. It's good—it's always good, Pollo Tropical hits different after a long day, there's a reason every Miamian has a complicated emotional relationship with that chain—but my stomach is doing that thing it does when I'm trying not to think about something. The low-grade tightness. The slight nausea that isn't quite nausea. The body's polite way of saying hey, you have unprocessed feelings stored in the thoracic cavity, would you like to address those or should we just keep tensing the diaphragm indefinitely.

I keep tensing the diaphragm.

"You good?" Marco asks. Eyes still on the game.

"Yep."

"You're doing the rice thing."

"What rice thing."

"The thing where you stir the rice in circles when you're thinking too hard. You've been doing it since you were like nine. It's your tell."

I look down. My fork is, in fact, moving in slow, meditative circles through the white rice.

I put the fork down.

"I'm fine," I say.

Marco takes a long pull of his Modelo. Says nothing. Lets the silence exist, which is the most devastating move in the older sibling playbook because it leaves no target for deflection.

"I'm just tired," I add, because silence makes me confess things. "New job. The move. My head still hurts a little."

"The stitches or the other stuff."

"...Combo."

He nods. Doesn't push. This is what Marco does that our mother never mastered—he creates space and then just waits in it, patient in a way that shouldn't be possible for someone who runs on cafecito and anxiety.

"Canada race is this weekend," he says finally. Casual. Tossing it out there like it's nothing, like it's just sports scheduling trivia and not a carefully placed conversational probe.

My fork starts moving again.

I catch it. Stop.

"Cool," I say.

"Veloce's looking strong. Richter won qualifying in Baku last year, Monaco was a P1 before the—well. You know." He glances at me sideways. "He'll probably podium."

"Probably."

"He's been doing extra recovery work. Per his physio notes, which I've seen approximately never because that's not my job, but paddock gossip is a living ecosystem and I've been in it for seven years."

"Marco."

"I'm just saying."

"Okay," I say.

"Okay," he agrees.

We finish our food. The Marlins lose, which feels appropriate.

I can't sleep.

This is not a surprise. Sleep and I have the kind of relationship that exists entirely on sleep's terms—it shows up when it wants, leaves without warning, and occasionally sends a representative in the form of shallow half-consciousness that technically counts as rest but leaves you feeling like you've spent the night in a waiting room.

Marco's snoring is audible through the wall.

Here's the thing about Marco's snoring: it's not the irregular, sputtering kind that keeps you alert because you're always waiting for the next one. It's rhythmic. Consistent. Approximately every four seconds, with a slight variation on the exhale that gives it an almost musical quality, like a very large, very asleep metronome.

I'm lying in his bed—which is fine, the sheets are clean, he's a grown man with an Ikea bed frame and a duvet that probably cost forty dollars and does the job—staring at the water stain on the ceiling.

The Virgin Mary stain. Or the manatee. Still unresolved.

My phone says 1:17 AM.

My body says we're not sleeping tonight, I've decided.

My brain says great, let's think about everything that's happened in the last two weeks in excruciating detail, starting with the airport and working chronologically forward, let's really marinate.

I tell my brain to go to hell.

My brain begins the slideshow anyway.

Duane's apartment. The grey walls. The guest bed that cost more than my education. The way he sat on the floor next to that bed with his back against the mattress, not touching me, just there, and somehow that was enough—more than enough, it was everything, which is insane, which is clinically concerning, which suggests my threshold for feeling safe has been set at a level that would make a licensed therapist need a minute.

The thought moves through me like pressing on a bruise. That specific ache that isn't quite pain—more like the memory of pain, the body's muscle memory of something that hurt.

I turn over. Face the window.

Wynwood at 1:17 AM is not quiet. Miami is never quiet. There's a bar two blocks east that has live music on weeknights—right now someone's doing a reggaeton set that I can feel more than hear, the bass frequency traveling through the building's bones and into mine. Somewhere outside, a car idles. The ambient orange glow of streetlights turns the window into a dim rectangle of rust and gold.

I watch it.

This is the thing about having a brain that won't stop: eventually you run out of things to think about and you just start... watching. Surfaces. Light. The way shadows move when something passes outside. It's not peace exactly. It's more like exhaustion wearing peace's outfit. The brain equivalent of a computer that's been running too many programs finally just going static.

I'm watching the window go static when it happens.

Something hits the glass.

Small. Sharp. A thwick sound.

I sit up.

The window is fine—no crack, nothing broken. Just a... something on the sill. I squint across the room in the dark.

It's a paper airplane.